Analysis of the mobile-to-base link in cellular CDMA

The authors have evaluated the performance of the mobile-to-base link of a cellular code-division multiple access (CDMA) system. The analysis incorporates the effects of flat Rayleigh fading, and it is found, for example, that using a rate 1/2 block code and a processing gain of 511 allows somewhere between 80 and 150 simultaneously active users at a decoded bit error rate (BER) of 10^-3. The lower number arises from a propagation exponent of two, and the higher number results when the exponent is four. These numbers, of course, will roughly double when voice activity effects are included